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French regulator tells Saint Laurent to remove degrading posters

Decision by regulator ARPP follows 120 complaints over French fashion house’s adverts, which use extremely thin models in humiliating poses.

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France’s advertising regulator has ordered the fashion house Saint Laurent to remove posters of extremely thin models in degrading poses after an outcry over their appearance around Paris, reports The Guardian.

The campaign features a reclining woman in a fur coat and fishnet tights opening her legs; another has a model in a leotard and stilettos on roller skates bending over a stool.

Stéphane Martin, head of the advertising regulator ARPP, told AFP that his organisation had received 120 complaints about the way the posters depicted women. The authority bars all “degrading and humiliating” representations of people.

It has written to Saint Laurent asking it to “stop the use of these images, to withdraw them or to change them”, Martin said, explaining that a more detailed assessment of the campaign would be made on Friday.

Britain’s advertising watchdog banned a Saint Laurent advert two years ago that featured a model who appeared to be unhealthily underweight.

Read more of this report from The Guardian.